February 14, 2014 1:58pm ESTFebruary 14, 2014 12:31pm ESTRichard Petty called out Danica Patrick this week, saying she can't win a NASCAR Cup race. Can she? Her peers and rivals have a different take on Patrick's prospects.Danica Patrick(AP Photo)

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Even if Richard Petty had not questioned her talent earlier this week, Danica Patrick still would have faced the same questions about her NASCAR prospects as she did a year ago as a rookie in the Sprint Cup Series.

It’s an open-ended question that could take a while to answer as long Patrick has sponsorship — and it appears she is winning in that department. It took Michael Waltrip 462 starts before he won his first Cup race. Patrick has 46 starts with one top-10 finish, an eighth in the 2013 Daytona 500.

Petty, a seven-time Cup champion and one of the sport’s most iconic figures, quipped Sunday that Patrick would win “if everybody else stayed home.”

Patrick might have hoped that the conversation would have turned from “if she will win” to “when she would win” by now, but after a rookie season where she finished 27th in the standings, the question remains: Will she ever win in Cup?

Her car owner, Tony Stewart, believes she is making progress, and he has hired Mark Martin to help her if she needs advice on how to approach a racetrack.

“For the small amount of time that she's been in a stock car, I think she's learned a lot,” Stewart said. “Having Mark is going to be that much more of a help and asset to her.

“She can put together a day. It's just a matter of getting that right day put together.”

Patrick, 31, enters the Daytona 500 knowing that the season-opening race, the biggest event of the year, is one of her best chances to win. Competing at restrictor-plate tracks mimics the IndyCar style of racing the most. Patrick, the only woman to win an IndyCar race, competed in two partial Nationwide seasons before committing to NASCAR full time in 2012.

She won the pole for the Daytona 500 last year — the first time a female driver has ever started on the pole for any Cup race — and her eighth-place finish ranks as the best finish by a female in the Daytona 500

“On the (restrictor-plate) speedways, it's just about navigating the cars around you, and drafting, your mindset throughout the whole thing, your discipline,” Patrick said.

“So I feel like it could definitely happen. … This is much more familiar to me than the rest of the racing in a stock car because you're taking the elements of learning how the car reacts to how the bump-stops (in the shocks) work, how the bar wrap works, how different spring packages work.”

Brad Keselowski, the 2012 Cup champion, tweeted that he believes she can win at Daytona or Talladega but didn’t mention any other tracks.

“I haven’t seen any indications that would make me think any differently on that,” Keselowski said when asked if she could win on other tracks.

So how long will it take before she is considered a winning contender?

“Look at what she did in Indy, she had a really good chance of winning there at the 500 once or twice, and last year (in the Daytona 500) was in a great position through the course of the race,” six-time Cup champion Jimmie Johnson said. “I'd say plate racing is probably the first opportunity for her.

“It's just going to take time to sort out of the other areas. … Regardless if it's Danica, a male driver, whoever it is, you really need five years to kind of get yourself where you need to be in this sport and find those last few tenths (of a second). It's one thing to get within a couple seconds, but the last few tenths are the hardest thing to find.”

To find it, she must have a better feel for her car at the start of race weekends. She and her team have talked about being more methodical instead of just making big changes to drastically adjust the car.

“When you come off the truck, you have to know the line you're going to run, where your braking points are, your turn-in, on throttle, the fuel (mix) you're looking for,” Johnson said. “You need all those things because if you don't and you need an hour of the two-hour practice session to find your way, you just lost an hour to the field.”

That learning process is frustratingly slow. But it’s the frustration of trying to learn and not the criticism that Patrick feels. She brushed off Petty’s comments and that’s not a front, those close to her say.

“She just doesn’t care and moves on and lets it roll off,” SHR teammate Kevin Harvick said. “I think she’s dealt with so much for so long that she’s just immune to it.”

Harvick and Kurt Busch are new teammates for Patrick this year, and Harvick believes that will help her.

“This year is going to be really good for her and her learning curve just for the fact that we went and tested together at Nashville — just a couple of conversations can help,” Harvick said. “She can drive the car. … I’ve been in a stock car since I was 16 so that’s 22 years.

“You aren’t going to make that experience up. She’s realistic about what she needs to do and accomplish. Just getting those little conversations over before you get to the track can overcome a lot of hurdles.”

One of those hurdles is having to answer questions when getting criticized or called out, especially by an icon like Petty.

“You can’t call out The King, because he’s The King,” said Dale Earnhardt Jr., who co-owned Patrick’s car in her two part-time and one full-time Nationwide season. “He’s such a patriarch and icon in the sport. He has tons of wisdom and insight and a guy that everyone respects. He’s done a lot for this sport, and still does today.

“But at the same time, when I think about Danica, … she deals with more criticism than anybody else has ever faced in this sport, and that’s unfortunate. She goes by a different set of rules because of her gender, and that’s unfortunate. It seems like she's always having to answer to something like that, and that’s a pain in her butt. And frankly, it’s just got to get old. ”